Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

11 Theses on the Meaning of Scriptural Authority

Douglas Wilson

Blog&Mablog

Monday, January 26, 2015

1. Our starting point for all discussions of biblical authority should begin with an affirmation of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. More needs to said on this subject than was said there, but not less. Fruitful discussion can take place only among those who can honestly sign that statement. With those who cannot sign it, our duty is that of charitable debate and refutation.

2. Obedience is a key element in exegetical understanding. Obedience is the opener of eyes. Without obedient application, the text is not really being studied.

3. Affirmations of biblical authority are worthless unless we understand that the contemporary secular challenges to biblical authority create enormous pressure on those affirming inerrancy to develop interpretive workarounds, such that inerrancy can be formally affirmed while being practically denied. Examples of such pressures today would include biblical teaching on sexuality and human origins.

4. Scripture is given to us as seed, and is therefore intended to grow and flower down through history. The Word of God is living and active and this extends to more than just the personal conversion of individuals. The living Word is intended by its growth to shape and govern all of human history. The development of unbelief in history has no authority to dictate the contents of the seed.

Daily Devotional

All in All

"Your heavenly Father."
Matthew 6:26

Charles Spurgeon

God's people are doubly his children, they are his offspring by creation, and they are his sons by adoption in Christ. Hence they are privileged to call him, "Our Father which art in heaven." Father! Oh, what precious word is that.

Here is authority: "If I be a Father, where is mine honour?" If ye be sons, where is your obedience? Here is affection mingled with authority; an authority which does not provoke rebellion; an obedience demanded which is most cheerfully rendered--which would not be withheld even if it might. The obedience which God's children yield to him must be loving obedience. Do not go about the service of God as slaves to their taskmaster's toil, but run in the way of his commands because it is your Father's way. Yield your bodies as instruments of righteousness, because righteousness is your Father's will, and his will should be the will of his child.

Father!--Here is a kingly attribute so sweetly veiled in love, that the King's crown is forgotten in the King's face, and his sceptre becomes, not a rod of iron, but a silver sceptre of mercy--the sceptre indeed seems to be forgotten in the tender hand of him who wields it.

Father!--Here is honour and love. How great is a Father's love to his children! That which friendship cannot do, and mere benevolence will not attempt, a father's heart and hand must do for his sons. They are his offspring, he must bless them; they are his children, he must show himself strong in their defence. If an earthly father watches over his children with unceasing love and care, how much more does our heavenly Father?

Abba, Father! He who can say this, hath uttered better music than cherubim or seraphim can reach. There is heaven in the depth of that word--Father! There is all I can ask; all my necessities can demand; all my wishes can desire. I have all in all to all eternity when I can say, "Father."

Let's Move On, Shall We

Shooting The Rarefied High Hoops

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has died.  The NZ flag was flown at half-mast.  Prime Minister, John Key engaged in casuistic necromancy to justify this decision:

A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister said he requested that the flag fly at half mast in accordance with the law and he received advice from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  One of the days on which the flag is to be flown at half mast for mourning under the NZ Flag Notice 1986 is upon the death of the head of state of any foreign country. [NZ Herald]

The flag may be flown at half mast when mourning the passing of a head of state.  We are pretty sure the law does not say, shall be flown. Ah, but let's not quibble.

Some commentators have taken the opportunity to pillory the human rights record of the Saudi government.  It is indeed atrocious.  Moreover, the Saudi government is a monarchy that is archly authoritarian, even totalitarian, venturing to tell women how they must dress, and forbidding them to drive cars.  Not even the Soviet Union on a bad day was that totalitarian in its command and control of its citizens.

Don't Go There . . .

UK No-Go Zones Sparking Tension Between Black and Muslim Communities

by John Hayward 
22 Jan 2015
BreitbartUK

For many years, we have been hearing reports of insular Muslim communities in Europe, particularly in France and the UK, which became known as “no-go zones” because non-Muslims were not welcome there. Islamic clerics were given autonomous authority, and government agents were hesitant to assert themselves.

Following three significant recent events – the Charlie Hebdo massacre, Louisiana governor and possible GOP presidential candidate Bobby Jindal referring to no-go zones in a London speech, and Fox News reporting on the phenomenon – it suddenly became fashionable to insist that nothing of the sort has ever existed at all. French and British politicians plus Fox News critics have been lecturing that the whole thing is an urban legend that somehow fooled a great many people in Europe and America for years.

Actually, it’s commonly implied that the no-go legend popped out of thin air just a few weeks ago, as if Jindal or Fox News’ guests made it up on the spot.  In truth, these areas have been studied for years, and not exclusively by conservatives.  Ezra Levant uncovered a video from eleven years ago – when, as he points out, the Muslim population in the Birmingham area of England was half as large as it is today – in which a filmmaker from Trinidad, interested in documenting race relations across the Western world, described a “tense atmosphere” in which “outsiders feel threatened” at the conclusion of the Ramadan holiday (segment begins at 15:18):

Daily Devotional

Grown Ups Hardly Ever

TO RUTH BROADY: Lewis’s last letter to a child about Narnia.
26 October 1963

C. S. Lewis

Many thanks for your kind letter, and it was very good of you to write and tell me that you like my books; and what a very good letter you write for your age!

If you continue to love Jesus, nothing much can go wrong with you, and I hope you may always do so. I’m so thankful that you realized the ‘hidden story’ in the Narnian books. It is odd, children nearly always do, grown ups hardly ever.

I’m afraid the Narnian series has come to an end, and am sorry to tell you that you can expect no more.
God bless you.

From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume III
Compiled in Yours, Jack
The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume III: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy 1950-1963. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Yours, Jack: Spiritual Direction from C. S. Lewis. Copyright © 2008 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Sourced from BibleGateway.

Dark Blots

Thankful for Progress . . . But More Needs to be Done

There are few things more sad than people being convicted wrongly.  There are few things more provocative than the state doing little or nothing to right the wrong.  The "corrective" being deployed in some jurisdictions is to set up an independent review authority which can go to work to examine further and test unsafe convictions.

The state of North Carolina, in the United States, provides one example:

A 70-year-old man was freed from prison Friday, after a panel of judges found that he was wrongly convicted in the stabbing deaths of a mother and daughter nearly four decades ago.  The judges heard from a DNA expert who said none of the evidence collected in the case matched Joseph Sledge. A district attorney apologized to Sledge and promised to reopen the case into the 1976 slayings.  "The system has made a mistake," district attorney Jon David said. "The wrong man is in prison." . . . .

Destroying People's Lives

The Cult of Global Warming

MIT Climate Scientist: Global Warming Believers a ‘Cult’

by Howie Carr 
21 Jan 2015
BreitbartNews

An MIT professor of meteorology is dismissing global-warming alarmists as a discredited “cult” whose members are becoming more hysterical as emerging evidence continues to contradict their beliefs.  During an appearance on this writer’s radio show Monday, MIT Professor emeritus Richard Lindzen discussed the religious nature of the movement.

“As with any cult, once the mythology of the cult begins falling apart, instead of saying, oh, we were wrong, they get more and more fanatical. I think that’s what’s happening here. Think about it,” he said. “You’ve led an unpleasant life, you haven’t led a very virtuous life, but now you’re told, you get absolution if you watch your carbon footprint. It’s salvation!”

Lindzen, 74, has issued calm dismissals of warmist apocalypse, reducing his critics to sputtering rage.  Last week, government agencies including NASA announced that 2014 was the “hottest year” in “recorded history,” as The New York Times put it in an early edition. Last year has since been demoted by the Times to the hottest “since record-keeping began in 1880.”

Daily Devotional

Delayed Deliverances

Immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds were unfastened. (Acts 16:25)

John Piper

In this age, God rescues his people from some harm. Not all harm. That’s comforting to know, because otherwise we might conclude from our harm that he has forgotten us or rejected us.

So be encouraged by the simple reminder that in Acts 16:19–24, Paul and Silas were not delivered, but in verses 25–26, they were.

First, no deliverance:

• “They seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace.” (v. 19)
• “The magistrates tore the garments off them.” (v. 22)
• They “inflicted many blows upon them.” (v. 23)
• The jailer “fastened their feet in the stocks.” (v. 24)

But then deliverance:

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God . . . and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds were unfastened. (verses 25–26)

God could have stepped in sooner. He didn’t. He has his reasons. He loves Paul and Silas.

Question for you: If you plot your life along this continuum, where are you? Are you in the stripped-and-beaten stage, or the unshackled, door-flung-open stage?

Both are God’s stages of care for you.

If you are in the fettered stage, don’t despair. Sing. Freedom is on the way. It is only a matter of time. Even if it comes through death.

For more about John Piper's ministry and writing, see DesiringGod.org.

Tricks Upon the Dead

The Webs of Deceit

The cynic, Voltaire gave us a bon mot about the discipline of history.  We have often had cause to mention it in the pages of this blog.  "History," he said, "is the living playing tricks upon the dead."  He meant that history is made up and told to serve the interests of those who write, not those they write about.  He would have known.  He was part of one of the greatest mythological revisions of Western history we have yet seen.  As one of the Enlightenment philosphes he was one of the scribblers re-writing history to glorify ancient paganism and demonise the Christian faith.  He was grinding his own axe, and he knew it.  Consequently, he was cynical about the entire enterprise of historical research.

For all serious and professional historians, a good adage is, "Beware the revisionists".  It beholds anyone to inquire about any particular axes being ground.  Revisionist causes are alive and well when it comes to New Zealand history.  Central are contentions now trumpeted as infallible truth about the Treaty of Waitangi. 

Here is the debate in a nutshell.  Firstly, for the revisionists:

Wishful Thinking and Just-So Stories

A Few Problems Down At The Farm

5 Scientific Problems with Current Theories of Biological and Chemical Evolution

Justin Taylor

January 21, 2015

The Discovery Institute identifies five areas of science that pose serious problems for neo-Darwinianism:

1. Genetics 

Mutations cause harm and do not build complexity.
Darwinian evolution relies on random mutations that are selected by a blind, unguided process of natural selection that has no goals.  Such a random and undirected process tends to harm organisms and does not improve them or build complexity.  As National Academy of Sciences biologist Lynn Margulis has said, “new mutations don’t create new species; they create offspring that are impaired.” Similarly, past president of the French Academy of Sciences, Pierre-Paul Grasse, contended that “[m]utations have a very limited ‘constructive capacity'” because “[n]o matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution.”

Daily Devotional

Go Directly to God

“In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.” (John 16:26–27)

John Piper

Don’t make God’s Son more of a Mediator than he is.

Jesus says: “I do not say that I will ask the Father on your behalf.” In other words, I’m not going to insert myself between you and the Father, as though you can’t go to him directly. Why? “Because the Father himself loves you.”

This is astonishing. Jesus is warning us not to think of God Almighty as unwilling to receive us directly into his presence. By “directly” I mean what Jesus meant when he said, “I am not going to take your requests to God for you. You may take them directly. He loves you. He wants you to come. He is not angry at you.”

Lying for the Cause

What Is the Truth . . . ?

When cultures figure that the Lord Jesus Christ is beneath them, certain consequences follow.  The West has largely decided for secular materialism, rejecting  the God who made and governs the heavens and the earth.  It's a rather stupid thing to have done.  But there we go.

One of the consequences which follows such hubris is that sins become the norm.  They become institutionalised.  It comes as a bit of a shock to some to learn that truth-telling is not necessary any more.  Nobody does it.  The truth is so passée.  The post-Christian culture engages in all sorts of weaselling to justify laying the truth to one side. "What is the truth?", it asks.  There are many truths, all valid; truth is perspectival and relative. 

When people have "big causes", truth must serve the cause--which is to say, propaganda tops truth every time.  Lying for the cause is endemic throughout our society.  It's the new norm.  Here is just one example of modernist "truth-telling".

Once More Into the Trenches

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

Nine months in Four Minutes

Justin Taylor
January 22, 2015




For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.1
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
—Psalm 139:16-19

Daily Devotional

Chosen As One of Us

"I have exalted one chosen out of the people."
Psalm 89:19

Charles Spurgeon

Why was Christ chosen out of the people? Speak, my heart, for heart-thoughts are best. Was it not that he might be able to be our brother, in the blest tie of kindred blood? Oh, what relationship there is between Christ and the believer!   The believer can say, "I have a Brother in heaven; I may be poor, but I have a Brother who is rich, and is a King, and will he suffer me to want while he is on his throne? Oh, no! He loves me; he is my Brother."

Believer, wear this blessed thought, like a necklace of diamonds, around the neck of thy memory; put it, as a golden ring, on the finger of recollection, and use it as the King's own seal, stamping the petitions of thy faith with confidence of success. He is a brother born for adversity, treat him as such.

The Suicide of the Human Mind

The Suicide of Thought

G. K. Chesterton ran the numbers on how the modern world has sought to dance with numerous partners--all of which have destroyed the dance itself.  There are hypotheses which end up destroying the very possibility of thought and reason.  Here is Chesterton's list of rationalist suicides, destroying the very possibility of thought:

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Feminist Rape Constructs

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

January 21, 2015

Let us first review the facts.

Mount Holyoke College is an all-women’s college that recently began admitting male students who self-identify as female. And then, in a spasm of self-righteousness, there was a successful student-led effort to get a college performance of The Vagina Monologues cancelled because that play was insufficiently sensitive to those women who were vagina-less. We know that such creatures exist because we recently began admitting them to our college.

At American colleges, The Vagina Monologues is traditionally — ah, tradition! — performed on Valentine’s Day because, and this is important to note, American colleges generally don’t have a clue. But, and this is also important to note, if ever you think that this vapid cluelessness has disappeared down Alice’s rabbit hole forever, up it pops again later, right in your news feed, still chattering at us about gender constructs.

We need to recognize that some rapists self-identify as tender, sensitive, and thoughtful caregivers. What is more of a social construct than violence? We need to raise awareness of that, people.

So then, speaking of gender constructs, let us pursue the will of the sexual revolution all the way out to the end. Unless it is endless, of course, but we can still make some pretty good time. I think. After a while you lose track because the outer darkness doesn’t keep their mile markers maintained very well. And the roads are really bad.

The Vagina Monologues — that sexist throwback to earlier misogynistic times — was performed the way it was by the thoughtless feminist minions in order “to raise awareness of gender-based violence.” But if we have now gotten to the place in our absurdist theater review where we are laboring to avoid offending all the women-without-vaginas out there, I don’t know why we shouldn’t follow this to the utter frozen limit. We need to recognize that some rapists self-identify as tender, sensitive, and thoughtful caregivers. What is more of a social construct than violence? We need to raise awareness of that, people.

Daily Devotional

The Anchor of Joy

“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.” (Matthew 5:11)

John Piper

Jesus revealed a secret that protects our happiness from the threat of suffering and the threat of success. That secret is this: Great is your reward in heaven. And the sum of that reward is enjoying the fullness of the glory of Jesus Christ (John 17:24).

He protects our happiness from suffering when he says,

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. (Matthew 5:11–12)

Our great reward in heaven rescues our joy from the threat of persecution and reviling.

He also protects our joy from success when he says,

Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. (Luke 10:20)

The disciples were tempted to put their joy in ministry success. “Even the demons are subject to us in your name!” (Luke 10:17). But that would have severed their joy from its only sure anchor.

So Jesus protects their joy from the threat of success by promising the great reward of heaven. Rejoice in this: that your names are written in heaven. Your inheritance is infinite, eternal, sure.  Our joy is safe. Neither suffering nor success can destroy its anchor. Great is your reward in heaven. Your name is written there. It is secure.

Jesus anchored the happiness of suffering saints in the reward of heaven. And he anchored the happiness of successful saints in the same.  And thus he freed us from the tyranny of worldly pain and pleasure.

For more about John Piper's ministry and writing, see DesiringGod.org.

Total Freedom, If You First Bow to Caesar

Deceit, Damned Self-Deceit, and Secularism

Self-aware Christians know that, "there ain't no neutral ground".  Christians are more likely to be epistemologically self-aware.  They know that all truth is pre-interpreted truth.  It is pre-interpreted by God the creator and sustainer of all things.  Anyone who argues there can be such a thing as a neutral zone--a secular public square, for example--where all views are held with equal respect and have equal validity is either self-deceived, childishly credulous or a snake.

The same reality holds in schools.  Secular schools that are even-handed, and tolerant towards all beliefs and religions, gods, and speculations are a nonsense.  At base, the secularists who make such claims, know it is spurious.  But it feels good.  It is a just-so story they tell themselves to maintain a veneer of self-respect and to fool their opponents.

Christians are liberated from such self-deceits.  If all truth is pre-interpreted truth, as the Christian faith insists is the case, then everyone is pre-committed and biased to a particular world-view from the outset--either Christian or otherwise.  When it comes to schooling, Christians want schools that are independent of the secularist world-view and able fully to reflect the authority of the Word of God as the pre-interpretion all other truth, reality, and knowledge.  In New Zealand, the only way to achieve this is to have truly private schools, self-funded.  If the secularist government pays, eventually the secularist government will control the music its hired piper plays. 

When the Conservative government in the UK set about to reform British schools, it adopted a quasi-market model which was designed to introduce competition into the education market place.

A Turning of the Tide?

Poll: Majority of Americans Favor Restrictions on Abortion

Jan. 21, 2015 1:24pm

Billy Hallowell

The Blaze

The abortion debate is often simplified into a “pro-life” and “pro-choice” paradigm, but a new poll shows that views on the controversial procedure are actually quite complicated, with a majority of Americans from both sides favoring significant restrictions.

A new Knights of Columbus-Marist poll found that, on the whole, 84 percent of Americans favor restrictions on abortion. While the majority of self-professed pro-lifers agreed with this sentiment, so too did 69 percent of those who call themselves pro-choice.  Adding to this dynamic, survey respondents were far more likely to believe that there are too many abortions (64 percent) in America than they were to say that there are too few (7 percent).

Knights of Columbus-Marist Poll

Daily Devotional

The Road of Sorrow

"He was sore athirst, and called on the Lord, and said, thou hast given this great deliverance into the hand of thy servant: and now shall I die for thirst?"
Judges 15:18

Charles Spurgeon

Samson was thirsty and ready to die. The difficulty was totally different from any which the hero had met before. Merely to get thirst assuaged is nothing like so great a matter as to be delivered from a thousand Philistines! but when the thirst was upon him, Samson felt that little present difficulty more weighty than the great past difficulty out of which he had so specially been delivered.

It is very usual for God's people, when they have enjoyed a great deliverance, to find a little trouble too much for them. Samson slays a thousand Philistines, and piles them up in heaps, and then faints for a little water! Jacob wrestles with God at Peniel, and overcomes Omnipotence itself, and then goes "halting on his thigh!" Strange that there must be a shrinking of the sinew whenever we win the day. As if the Lord must teach us our littleness, our nothingness, in order to keep us within bounds.

Enlightened Policing

Citizens in Uniform

There are some encouraging signs coming from the NZ Police.  Over the Christmas break, the NZ Police Commissioner, Mike Bush was quoted in the NZ Herald, saying:

Behind the scenes, we have transformed the way we work. We have put preventing crime and meeting the needs of victims at the forefront of everything police do, with outstanding results.

These include a 20.1 per cent reduction in recorded crime in the past five years, meaning tens of thousands of people were spared the trauma of becoming victims. That's what New Zealand Police is all about.  And we have revolutionised the way our people work by issuing our frontline with smartphones and tablets loaded with customised apps to allow them to spend more time in their communities and less time at the office doing paperwork. On the streets is where they can make the most difference.

Granted this is a PR piece.  But it does underscore some important policing principles.  These include:

• The importance of crime prevention.
• Being victim focused.
• The importance of community and neighbourhood policing
• A constant presence on the streets.

We are sure that much more needs to be done.  One thing stands out: historically, the police force came into existence in the UK as an extension of the public's fundamental role and duty in policing their own neighbourhoods.  The police received their powers from the public, not the state.  Wherever that fundamental reality is lost, the police become more and more ineffectual, and crime soars.

Letter From America (About Europe's "Far Right")

In Defense of Europe's So-called Far Right

by Daniel Pipes
The Washington Times
January 19, 2015

Sunday a week ago, the French government sponsored a solidarity rally featuring an array of foreign leaders and all domestic political parties joining together in a "sacred union" (a term recalling World War I) against the massacres at Charlie Hebdo magazine and the kosher market.

Make that all the political parties except one -- the National Front (NF) headed by Marine Le Pen, ostensibly excluded because it does not subscribe to "republican values." In reality, it was barred because, uniquely among French political parties, it opposes immigration; and other politicians fear that the NF gains in the aftermath of the massacres. Likewise, the government yesterday forbade a demonstration by the secularist Riposte Laïque organization that called for "Islamists out."

The NF and similar parties represent the healthy, normal, legitimate, and constructive response of a people under stress.

Although myself a classical liberal with libertarian tendencies, in the center of the Republican party in the United States, I welcome the strengthening of the National Front and many of the other parties vilified as being on the "far right." Here is why:

Daily Devotional

The Remedy for Pride

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. (James 4:13–16)

John Piper

When you take three categories of temptation to self-reliance — wisdom, might, and riches — they form a powerful inducement toward the ultimate form of pride, namely, atheism. The safest way to stay supreme in our own estimation is to deny anything above us.

This is why the proud preoccupy themselves with looking down on others. “A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you” (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity).  But to preserve pride, it may be simpler to proclaim that there is nothing above to look at. “In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him; all his thoughts are, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 10:4). Ultimately, the proud must persuade themselves that there is no God.

One reason for this is that God’s reality is overwhelmingly intrusive in all the details of life. Pride cannot tolerate the intimate involvement of God in running even the ordinary affairs of life.  Pride does not like the sovereignty of God. Therefore pride does not like the existence of God, because God is sovereign. It might express this by saying, “There is no God.” Or it might express it by saying, “I am driving to Atlanta for Christmas.”

James says, “Don’t be so sure.” Instead, say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and we shall get to Atlanta for Christmas.” James’s point is that God rules over whether we get to Atlanta, and whether you live to the end of this devotional. This is extremely offensive to the self-sufficiency of pride — not even to have control over whether you get to the end of the devotional without having a stroke!

James says that not believing in the sovereign rights of God to manage the details of your future is arrogance.
The way to battle this arrogance is to yield to the sovereignty of God in all the details of life, and rest in his infallible promises to show himself mighty on our behalf (2 Chronicles 16:9), to pursue us with goodness and mercy every day (Psalm 23:6), to work for those who wait for him (Isaiah 64:4), and to equip us with all we need to live for his glory (Hebrews 13:21).

In other words, the remedy for pride is unwavering faith in God’s future grace.

For more about John Piper's ministry and writing, see DesiringGod.org.

Uber in New Zealand

Mr Plod and The Free Market

Human interaction in the marketplace is a fascinating study.  At the point of exchange, where a buyer and seller exchange property, all kinds of evil can be present: deceit, fraud, dissembling, theft, passing off, price gouging, refusal to pay--the list goes on.  Given our common propensity to rape and pillage, how could a universal behaviour such as buying and selling ever be kept relatively honest?

The statist answer is--no prize for guessing--the state's rules and regulations, restrictions and permits will keep the market place fair and honest.  The libertarian's answer is a transparent marketplace itself keeps the participants honest.

The libertarian belief in the regulating and moderating power of the marketplace really turns around human prudence and freely available information. Exploiters and bad-faith traders become known and exposed. No-one except fools want to deal with them. Both buyer and seller have a duty of care to themselves.  Market information about participants--good and bad--means that bad traders are driven out; good (that is, ethical) traders become more prosperous.  There are sanctions available in a free market, but they are largely by means of claims in a civil court.  If one "rips off" another, they are liable to civil action where the court may order redress and restitution. 

Between the two poles of statism and libertarianism, the market manages to trundle along.  Every so often there is a paradigm shift which shakes up all the participants in a particular industry.  Right now, one example is the taxi industry versus Uber.  The interplay between the transactors and the marketplace and the authorities is fascinating--and predictable.  Rodney Hide tells us how it is playing out in New Zealand:

Britain's National Health Service Creaking

Running Out of Other People's Money

NHS may be forced to abandon free healthcare for all, says Britain's top doctor as he warns service need

Tania Steere

The Daily Mail

20 January, 2015

The NHS is ‘not fit for the future’ and unless it undergoes radical change it may be forced to abandon free healthcare for all, in the future, the service's top doctor has warned. Medical director of NHS England Professor Sir Bruce Keogh said the NHS must become far less reliant on hospitals and needed a ‘complete transformation’ of the way it operates. Sir Bruce told the Guardian: ‘If the NHS continues to function as it does now, it’s going to really struggle to cope because the model of delivery and service that we have at the moment is not fit for the future.’ GP surgeries need to be given more resources to cope with the pressures of demand and tight budgets, he added.

Daily Devotional

Neighbours

C. S. Lewis

Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat [“is truly hidden”]—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.

From The Weight of Glory
Compiled in Words to Live By
The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses. Copyright © 1949, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1976, revised 1980 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Words to Live By: A Guide for the Merely Christian. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Sourced from BibleGateway.

Retracted in a Nano-Second

Qualifications and Clarifications Aplenty

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.  Monty Python could not have written such inanity into a script.  NASA came out at the end of last week trumpeting that 2014 was the warmest year on record.  The media dutifully picked up the headline, though with less fervour than it would have several years ago.  It's hard to maintain apocalyptic fever for so long a time.

The climate shills at NASA have had their credibility questioned over many years.  But they are still at the game of propaganda, not science.  Nowadays a growing number of climatologists and sceptical scientists are ready and willing to debunk their alarmist, emotive eruptions.  And so the reaction has started.  Consequently, it took only 48 hours for NASA to come out and admit that there was only a one in three chance that 2014 was the warmest year on record, and even if it were the case, it would only be the warmest by 0.02 degrees, which is within the margin of error.

A headline from the Daily Mail said it all:

Letter From America (About Disdain For Parents in Scotland)

Scotland’s “Named Persons” to Replace Parents

By Wendy Wright 
January 13, 2015
Turtle Bay and Beyond 

Under a new plan, Scotland will assign a state-employed guardian to every child from birth until age 18, who can intervene without parental consent and share information with a wide range of public authorities. Though the plan comes into effect in 2016, it is already being rolled out — and early indications are “named persons” will replace and trump parents’ legal rights.

Among its first appearances is sex education guidelines.

The Christian Institute reports the Scottish sex ed guidance’s section on confidentiality states: “Staff should discuss any concerns they have with the young person and ensure they have access to confidential, young people friendly services, where appropriate.”

“If there is judged to be a risk to the child’s wellbeing, staff should inform the child’s Named Person.” Parents are not mentioned.  “It beggars belief,” said a spokesman with No To Named Persons (NO2NP), “that a teacher with concerns about the wellbeing of a child – including underage sexual activity, which is a serious criminal offense – should be told by the Government to pass on those concerns to the Named Person and not the child’s parents.

Daily Devotional

How to Serve a Bad Boss

Rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free. (Ephesians 6:7–8)

John Piper

Consider these five things from Ephesians 6:7–8 in connection to your job.

1) A call to radically Lord-centered living.
It is astonishing compared to the way we usually live. Paul says that all our work should be done as work for Christ, not for any human supervisor. “With good will render service, as to the Lord, and not to men.”
This means that we will think of the Lord in what we are doing at work. We will ask, Why would the Lord like this done? How would the Lord like this done? When would the Lord like this done? Will the Lord help me do this? What affect will this have for the Lord’s honor? In other words, being a Christian means radically Lord-centered living.

2) A call to be a good person.
Lord-centered living means being a good person and doing good things. Paul says, “With good will render service . . . whatever good thing each one does . . .” Jesus said that when we let our light shine, men will see our “good deeds” and give glory to our Father in heaven.

3) Power to do a good job for inconsiderate earthly employers.
Paul’s aim is to empower Christians with Lord-centered motives to go on doing good for supervisors who are not considerate. How do you keep on doing good in a job when your boss ignores you or even criticizes you? Paul’s answer is: stop thinking about your boss as your main supervisor, and start working for the Lord. Do this in the very duties given to you by your earthly supervisor.

4) Encouragement that nothing good is done in vain.
Perhaps the most amazing sentence of all is this: “Whatever good thing each one does, this he will receive back from the Lord.” This is amazing. Everything. Every little thing you do that is good is seen and valued by the Lord.

And he will pay you back for it. Not in the sense that you have earned anything by putting him in your debt. He owns you and everything in the universe. He owes us nothing. But he freely, graciously chooses to reward good things done in faith.

5) Encouragement that insignificant status on earth is no hindrance to great reward in heaven.
The Lord will reward every good thing you do — “whether slave or free.” Your supervisor may think you are a nobody. Or he may not even know you exist. That doesn’t matter. The Lord knows you exist.

For more about John Piper's ministry and writing, see DesiringGod.org.

Silver Spoons are Few and Far Between

Life is Hard

The New Zealand government has trumpeted another decline in beneficiary numbers.  This is good news.

Social Development Minister Anne Tolley said today the 309,145 people on benefit at the end of the December 2014 quarter was 12,700 fewer than last year.  "This is the lowest December quarter since 2008 and the third consecutive quarter with such record lows," Tolley says.  Numbers on the Jobseeker Support benefit had fallen by more than 5500 since last year and had declined consistently since 2010, even as the overall working age population increased. [Stuff]

There is a peculiar world-view which takes great heart from permanently increasing beneficiary numbers--and the emergence of a class of perpetually unemployed.  It celebrates this as evidence of the success of government welfare programmes and of the central importance of the government in everyones' lives.  It is offered as a hallmark of an advanced, civilised society . . . until the "house that Jack built" runs out of citizens' money and the cards tumble down.  Politicians love to be doing "good things" with your money to justify their existence and ratchet up their ratings on the meter of self-importance.  The unintended consequences, however, are inevitable and very painful.

But for the most part people see reducing welfare rolls as very positive--for all concerned.  But not all.

Long Live the Pause

Scientists balk at ‘hottest year’ claims

Ignores Satellites showing 18 Year ‘Pause’ – ‘We are arguing over the significance of hundredths of a degree’ – The ‘Pause’ continues

Climate Depot's Marc Morano: 'Claiming 2014 is the 'hottest year' on record based on hundredths of a degree temperature difference is a fancy way of saying the global warming 'pause' is continuing.'
Astrophysicist Dr. Dr David Whitehouse: 'The NASA press release is highly misleading...talk of a record is scientifically and statistically meaningless.'
Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer: ‘Why 2014 Won’t Be the Warmest Year on Record’ (based on surface data)– ‘We are arguing over the significance of hundredths of a degree’ 

Climatologist Dr. Pat Michaels debunks 2014 ‘hottest year’ claim: ‘Is 58.46° then distinguishable from 58.45°? In a word, ‘NO.’

No Record Temperatures According To Satellites

Physicist Dr. Lubos Motl: ‘Please laugh out loud when someone will be telling you that it was the warmest year’

Climatologist Dr. Roger Pielke Sr.: 'We have found a significant warm bias. Thus, the reported global average surface temperature anomaly is also too warm.'

Climatologist Dr. Judith Curry: 'With 2014 essentially tied with 2005 and 2010 for hottest year, this implies that there has been essentially no trend in warming over the past decade.'

By: Marc Morano - Climate Depot 

January 16, 2015 

The global warming establishment and the media are crowing about 2010 being in a tie for the “hottest year” ever. The UK Guardian headline sums up the media’s promotion: 

UK Guardian: ‘Hottest Year’ Claim: 2014 officially the ‘hottest year’ on record US government scientists say - ‘Nasa and Noaa scientists report 2014 was 0.07F (0.04C) higher than previous records…The global average temperatures over land and sea surface for the year was 1.24F (0.69C) above the 20th century average, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) and Nasa reported. The scientists said 2014 was 0.07F (0.04C) higher than the previous records set in 2005 and 2010.’

But scientists and climate skeptics are countering that the claims of “hottest year” are based on immeasurable temperature differences that are based on hundredths of a degree differences.

Climate Depot’s Marc Morano issued this statement: “There are dueling global datasets — surface temperature records and satellite records — and they disagree. The satellites show an 18 year plus global warming ‘standstill and the satellite was set up to be “more accurate” than the surface records. 

See: Flashback: 1990 NASA Report: ‘Satellite analysis of upper atmosphere is more accurate, & should be adopted as the standard way to monitor temp change.’

Any temperature claim of “hottest  year” based on surface data is based on hundredths of a degree hotter than previous “hottest years”. This immeasurable difference is not even within the margin of error of temperature gauges. The claim of the “hottest year” is simply a political statement not based on temperature facts. “Hottest year” claims are based on minute fractions of a degree while ignoring satellite data showing Earth is continuing the 18 plus year ‘pause’ or ‘standstill’. See: The Great Pause lengthens again: Global temperature update: The Pause is now 18 years 3 months (219 months)

Claiming 2014 is the “hottest year” on record based on hundredths of a degree temperature difference is a fancy way of saying the global warming ‘pause’ is continuing.”

End Morano statement. (Morano was former staff of U.S. Senate Environment & Public Works Committee and producer of upcoming documentary Climate Hustle. He also testified in West VA on the climate school curriculum. )

#

Even former NASA global warming chief scientist  James Hansen, the leading proponent of man-made global warming in the U.S., conceded in 2011 that the “hottest year” rankings are essentially meaningless. Hansen explained that 2010 differed from 2005 by less than 2 hundredths of a degree F (that’s 0.018F). “It’s not particularly important whether 2010, 2005, or 1998 was the hottest year on record,” Hansen admitted on January 13.

Climatologist Dr. Judith Curry, former chair of the school of earth and atmospheric sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology, had this to say about 2014 being the ‘hottest year’: “The ‘warmest year’ is noticeably missing in the satellite data sets of lower atmospheric temperatures,” Curry wrote on January 16. 

Curry predicts another decade of a global warming ‘pause’ or ‘hiatus’. “I’ve made my projection – global surface temperatures will remain mostly flat for at least another decade,” she eexplained 

“With 2014 essentially tied with 2005 and 2010 for hottest year, this implies that there has been essentially no trend in warming over the past decade. This ‘almost’ record year does not help the growing discrepancy between the climate model projections and the surface temperature observations,” Curry told the Washington Post.

Curry continued: “Berkeley Earth (temperature analysis) sums it up well with this statement: ‘That is, of course, an indication that the Earth’s average temperature for the last decade has changed very little.’

Climatologist Dr. Pat Michaels, mocked the notion of the “hottest year.”   “Whether or not a given year is a hundredth of a degree or so above a previous record is not the issue. What IS the issue is how observed temperatures compare to what has been forecast to happen,” Michaels said.

Michaels continued: “John Christy and Richard McNider, from University of Alabama (Huntsville) recently compared climate model projections to observed lower atmospheric temperatures as measured by two independent sources: satellites and weather balloons. They found that the average warming predicted to have occurred since 1979 (when the satellite data starts) is approximately three times larger than what is being observed.”

Climatologist Dr. John Christy, professor of atmospheric sciences, University of Alabama-Huntsville, noted satellites do not agree with “warmest year” claims. “The satellite and balloon data of the deep atmosphere have 2014 in a cluster of warmish years well below the hottest two of 1998 and 2010″, Christy said.

Christy continued: “With the government agencies reporting that the surface temperature as highest ever, we have a puzzle. The puzzle is even more puzzling because theory (i.e. models) indicate the opposite should be occurring – greater warmth in the deep atmosphere than the surface. So, there are just many very basic and fundamental aspects of the global climate we have yet to comprehend.”

Climatologist Dr. Roger Pielke Sr., professor of atmospheric science, Colorado State University, downplayed the accuracy of the surface temperature record. “There remain significant uncertainties in the accuracy of the land portion of the surface temperature data, where we have found a significant warm bias. Thus, the reported global average surface temperature anomaly is also too warm.”

“More generally, we need to move beyond just assessing global warming, but examine how (and if) key atmospheric and ocean circulations, such as El Nino, La Nina, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, etc. are changing in their intensity, structure and frequency. These are the climate features that determine if a region has drought, floods, and so forth, not a global average surface temperature anomaly,” Pielke added.

Astrophysicist Dr. Dr David Whitehouse declared “talk of a record is scientifically and statistically meaningless.’ “The addition of 2014 global temperature data confirms that the post-1997 standstill seen in global annual average surface temperature has continued,” Whitehouse wrote on January 16.

“According to the Nasa global temperature database 2014 was technically a record ‘beating’ 2010 by the small margin of 0.02 deg C. The NASA press release is highly misleading saying that 2014 is a record without giving the actual 2014 figure, or any other year, or its associated error.”

“In reality of course it is no record at all as the error of the measurements is about +/- 0.1 deg C showing NasaGiss’ statement to go against the normal treatment of observational data and its errors. Talk of a record is therefore scientifically and statistically meaningless,” Whitehouse added.

“It is clear beyond doubt by now that there is a growing discrepancy between computer climate projections and real-world data that questions their ability to produce meaningful projections about future climatic conditions,” Whitehouse concluded.

Another analysis noted: NASA Hottest Year Claims Not Supported By The Data: NASA admitted in 2011 that “hottest year” differences were “smaller than the uncertainty in comparing the temperatures of recent years.”

Via the website ‘Not A Lot Of People Know That: “Nowhere does their (NASA 2015) press release tell us that it only beat the previous record by a tiny, effectively unmeasurable 0.02C. Nor do they mention that the error bars are many times greater, or even tell us what they are. This is all very strange because in their (NASA) report on 2010 Global Temperatures, NASA said:

“Global surface temperatures in 2010 tied 2005 as the warmest on record, according to an analysis released Wednesday by researchers at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. The two years differed by less than 0.018 degrees Fahrenheit. The difference is smaller than the uncertainty in comparing the temperatures of recent years, putting them into a statistical tie.”

Meteorologist Dr. Ryan Maue of Florida State University ridiculed the same “hottest year” rankings in 2010 and NASA’s Hansen’s admission that it “was not particularly important” which year was declared the “hottest.” “Well, then stop issuing press releases which tout the rankings, which are subject to change ex post facto,” Maue demanded in a January 14, 2011 commentary at WattsUpWithThat.com.

Other prominent scientists have said that temperature rise since 1850 has been very small.
See: Top Swedish Climate Scientist Says Warming Not Noticeable: ‘The warming we have had last a 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all’ – Award-Winning Dr. Lennart Bengtsson, formerly of UN IPCC: ‘We Are Creating Great Anxiety Without It Being Justified’. Dr. Bengtsson announced his skeptical climate views in 2014.

Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Dr. Ivar Giaever, declared his dissent on global warming and noted that the temperature rise over the 20th century was “so little. It is not even fever.”  Giaever won a Nobel Prize for physics.

“.8 degrees we will be discussing in global warming. .8 degrees if you ask people in general they will think it is 4 or 5 degrees they don’t know it is so little. It is not even fever,” Giaever said.

“I am amazed that the temperature can be so stable,” Giaever explained. ‘The temperature (of the Earth) has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period.’

“I don’t see that co2 is the cause of all this problem,” he added.

Related Links: 
It’s Official – There are now 66 excuses for Temp ‘pause’ – Updated list of 66 excuses for the 18-26 year ‘pause’ in global warming Eco-Activists Warn 2014 Could Be Hottest Year On Record – Satellites Disagree

‘Hottest Year’ Update: NASA & NOAA ignore satellite data which reveal 2014 ‘well below’ hottest claims

Even ignoring satellite data Year-to-date ‘record’ temps are 0.21C *below* climate model projections

New paper finds excuse #66 for the ‘pause’: There’s no pause if you look at only at the warmest & coldest day of the year – Published in Environmental Research Letters

2014 might be 0.01C warmer than 2010!

No Record Temperatures According To Satellites – BBC put up a deliberately apocalyptic picture while telling us the world is on course for the warmest year on record. What they failed to tell us was that the more accurate satellites, which monitor atmospheric temperatures over nearly all of the globe, say no such thing.  Figures from UAH are out for November, and these show a drop from the  October anomaly of 0.27C to 0.33C. This means that at the end of November, this year is only in a tie for 3rd with 2005, and well below the record year of 1998, and 2010.

Flashback: 1990 NASA Report: ‘Satellite analysis of upper atmosphere is more accurate, & should be adopted as the standard way to monitor temp change.’

2014 ‘Warmest ever’? ‘Conflicting Reports’ – Surface temps show it may be warmer by ‘a couple hundredths of a degree Celsius’ — A Fancy Ways of Saying Temp Standstill Continues! - ‘As a result of data and computational uncertainty,  none of the surface compilations will 2014 be statistically different from 2010′ – ‘The three major groups calculating the average surface temperature of the earth (land and ocean combined) all are currently indicating that 2014 will likely nudge out 2010 (by a couple hundredths of a degree Celsius) to become the warmest year in each dataset (which begin in mid-to-late 1800s).’ – ‘The two satellite datasets ‘show that 2014 is nowhere near the warmest (in data which starts in 1979), trailing 1998 by several tenths of a degree Celsius. This difference is so great that it statistically clear that 2014 will not be a record year…The super El Niño of 1998 set a high temperature mark that will likely stand for many years to come, or at least until another huge El Niño occurs.’ – ‘If you want 2014 to be the “warmest year ever recorded” you can find data to back you up, and if you prefer it not be, well, you can find data to back up that position as well. In all cases, the former will make headlines.’

Daily Devotional

The Love of God and the Love of Man

C S Lewis

If the world exists not chiefly that we may love God but that God may love us, yet that very fact, on a deeper level, is so for our sakes. If He who in Himself can lack nothing chooses to need us, it is because we need to be needed. Before and behind all the relations of God to man, as we now learn them from Christianity, yawns the abyss of a Divine act of pure giving—the election of man, from nonentity, to be the beloved of God, and therefore (in some sense) the needed and desired of God, who but for that act needs and desires nothing, since He eternally has, and is, all goodness.

And that act is for our sakes. It is good for us to know love; and best for us to know the love of the best object, God. But to know it as a love in which we were primarily the wooers and God the wooed, in which we sought and He was found, in which His conformity to our needs, not ours to His, came first, would be to know it in a form false to the very nature of things.

For we are only creatures: our role must always be that of patient to agent, female to male, mirror to light, echo to voice. Our highest activity must be response, not initiative. To experience the love of God in a true, and not an illusory form, is therefore to experience it as our surrender to His demand, our conformity to His desire: to experience it in the opposite way is, as it were, a solecism against the grammar of being.

From The Problem of Pain
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis
The Problem of Pain. Copyright © 1940, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright restored © 1996 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. Copyright © 2003 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Sourced from BibleGateway.

A Hangover From Christendom

The Secular State Will Betray Free Speech

More than a few think that all free speech, by virtue of being free, is righteous speech.  Confused protagonists assume that as long as speech is a freedom right, everything uttered must be regarded as good, and never criticised.  Thus, when voices have been raised criticising the Charlie Hebdo portfolio as being extremist, blasphemous, illiberal, immoderate and crude, others have slam dunked the critics by accusing them of being anti-free speech.

Of course there are ethical limits to free speech.  Speech can be good or evil.  Moral or immoral.  The Scriptures unequivocally state that speech can very definitely be evil, and, more often than not, it is so.  Consider one of the Bible's declarations on the subject:

Vapour Trails

 The Signs of Christ At Work Amongst Us

Some of our readers will be familiar with Rosaria Butterfield.  In this video she responds to questions put to her by Russell Moore, one of the prominent theologians and teachers in the Southern Baptist Confederation.

To those who have not yet come across Rosaria, her experience of coming out of militant lesbianism to faith in the risen Christ is salutary and of great moment for the modern Church.  There is much to learn.  One of the most salutary and encouraging things is how Butterfield responds to questions about her experiences by placing her life within the context of the fundamentals and depths of the Christian faith.  This is what being saved by Christ "looks" like.  There is also important stuff in this video about what the community of the redeemed must be and become. 

Daily Devotional

The Freeness of Grace

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4–6)

John Piper

The decisive act of God in conversion is that he “made us alive together with Christ” even when “we were dead in our trespasses.” In other words, we were dead to God. We were unresponsive; we had no true spiritual interest; we had no taste for the beauties of Christ; we were simply dead to all that mattered.

Then God acted — unconditionally — before we could do anything to be fit vessels of grace. He made us alive. He sovereignly awakened us to see the glory of Christ (2 Corinthians 4:4). The spiritual senses that were dead miraculously came to life.

Verse 4 says that this was an act of “mercy.” That is, God saw us in our deadness and pitied us. God saw the terrible wages of sin leading to eternal death and misery. And the riches of his mercy overflowed to us in our need. But what is so remarkable about this text is that Paul breaks the flow of his own sentence in order to insert, “by grace you have been saved.” “God . . . made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — and raised us up with him.”

Paul is going to say this again in verse 8. So why does he break the flow in order to add it here? What’s more, the focus is on God’s mercy responding to our miserable plight of deadness; so why does Paul go out of his way to say that it is also by grace that we are saved?

I think the answer is that Paul recognizes here a perfect opportunity to emphasize the freeness of grace. As he describes our dead condition before conversion, he realizes that dead people can’t meet conditions. If they are to live, there must be a totally unconditional and utterly free act of God to save them. This freedom is the very heart of grace.

What act could be more one-sidedly free and non-negotiated than one person raising another from the dead! This is the meaning of grace.

For more about John Piper's ministry and writing, see DesiringGod.org.

Monarchical Tyranny Redivivus

Rotting Sores

George Will is a seasoned, right-of-centre columnist in the United States.  He penned an open letter to Loretta Lynch, who is the nominee for US Attorney General.  She is soon to be examined by the Senate.

In Will's letter, he raises a number of disturbing features of the US judicial system--features which appal advocates and commentators on both left and right. 

Senate confirmation hearings put nominees on notice that, as a Michigan state legislator reportedly once said, “I’m watching everything you do with a fine-toothed comb.” Loretta Lynch, a talented lawyer and seasoned U.S. attorney, should be confirmed as attorney general. Her hearing, however, should not be perfunctory.

Questions like the following would highlight some festering problems:

Next year is the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, which began the slow, serpentine progress to our modern panoply of rights, including those of persons accused of serious crimes. Today, however, regarding sexual misconduct on campuses, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights uses the threat of withdrawing federal funding to coerce colleges and universities into jettisoning crucial defendants’ protections when adjudicating, in improvised tribunals, accusations of sexual assault. Presumption of innocence? The new presumption is that accusations are valid until disproved. The right to confront one’s accuser? No, it would be traumatizing to the “survivor” (note the prejudgment). Proof beyond a reasonable doubt? Now a mere “preponderance of the evidence” will suffice. Are you comfortable with this traducing of due process?

The presumption of innocence and the need to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt are fundamental to our Anglo-Saxon systems of justice.

Letter From America (About French Wealth Taxes)

France Shows That Taxing Wealth Has Devastating Consequences

Daniel Hannan

British Conservative MEP

Washington Examiner

January 5, 2015

I was living in Brussels when François Hollande, the President of France, introduced his 75 percent top rate tax in 2012. Immediately, my quartier began to fill with French exiles, who could commute to Paris in just over an hour. One of the few Belgians left in my street, a stern local matriarch, stopped me as I left the house one morning. “You’re in politics, Monsieur le Député, maybe you can tell me something. What kind of hell must these poor souls be fleeing if they see Belgium as a tax haven?”

Three years on, President Hollande is shame-facedly scrapping the 75 percent rate, having forcibly re-learned an ancient truth: Wealth taxes don’t redistribute wealth; they redistribute people. Thousands of well-off Frenchmen made the easy journey north, including the country’s richest man, Bernard Arnault.
Others decided that if you’re going to flee punitive taxation, you can do better than the land of moules frites and speculoos biscuits. Gérard Depardieu, France’s greatest actor — in every sense — went to Russia, where, whatever their other problems, they have a flat rate tax on income of 13 percent (9 percent for dividends).

Not since the expulsion of France’s Protestants in 1685 has there been such an exodus of entrepreneurs to the Anglosphere; and this wave, like that one, has been a transfusion of talent, leaving the English-speaking world more energetic and France more anemic.

Hollande’s tax, levied on incomes above one million euros, has been a miserable failure. Over its lifespan, it raised around $500 million, a tiny fraction of the original projections. Why? Well, the Paris bureaucrats who made those projections overlooked something rather important. Rich people don’t sit around waiting to be taxed. They have all sorts of ways of beating the system, not necessarily involving accountants. The two most straightforward forms of legal tax avoidance are earlier retirement and emigration, and wealthy Frenchmen have made ample use of both.

Daily Devotional

Tired Traveller Near Journey's End

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE: On how to rehearse for death and how to diminish fear.
17 June 1963

Pain is terrible, but surely you need not have fear as well? Can you not see death as the friend and deliverer? It means stripping off that body which is tormenting you: like taking off a hair- shirt or getting out of a dungeon. What is there to be afraid of? You have long attempted (and none of us does more) a Christian life. Your sins are confessed and absolved. Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave it with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.

Remember, though we struggle against things because we are afraid of them, it is often the other way round—we get afraid be- cause we struggle. Are you struggling, resisting? Don’t you think Our Lord says to you ‘Peace, child, peace. Relax. Let go. Underneath are the everlasting arms. Let go, I will catch you. Do you trust me so little?’

Of course, this may not be the end. Then make it a good rehearsal.

Yours (and like you a tired traveller near the journey’s end) Jack
From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume III
Compiled in Yours, Jack

The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume III: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy 1950-1963. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Yours, Jack: Spiritual Direction from C. S. Lewis. Copyright © 2008 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Sourced from BibleGateway.

The Greening of the Planet

Cheap Oil, Good Times

Everyone has been agog over the rapid fall in oil prices.  No-one is quite sure when the bottom of the price barrel will be scraped.  Despite the Greenists dire predictions of  looming "peak oil" to hit in 2010, 11, 12, 13, 14 . . . and counting . . . which would have allegedly spelled the end of plentiful oil supplies, leading to rapidly ratcheting oil prices and economic doom, the opposite has happened.  (The Greenists, of course, trumpeted peak oil as an ideological rallying cry to force governments into investing other people's money in "alternative energy".  They were never interested in telling the truth about oil supplies.)

Now the world is awash with cheap oil.  You can draw a bath of the stuff, if you wish, and it will only set you back a nickel.  What is going on?

Mainstream Islam has Bloody Claws and Teeth

Christians Suffer ‘Extreme Persecution’ . . .

. . . in Countries with Majority Muslim Populations

by Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D. 
10 Jan 2015
BreitbartNews

According to the newly released World Watch List for 2015, nine out of the top ten countries where Christians suffer “extreme persecution” have populations that are at least 50% Muslim.

The World Watch List (WWL) is a ranking of the 50 countries where persecution of Christians for religious reasons is most severe. It is compiled by Open Doors USA, a human rights organization which has monitored Christian persecution worldwide since the 1970s.

The 2015 report found that “Islamic extremism is by far the most significant persecution engine” of Christians in the world today and that “40 of the 50 countries on the World Watch List are affected by this kind of persecution.”  The Watch List states that in the world today each month, on average, 322 Christians are killed for their faith, 214 Christian churches and properties are destroyed, and 772 acts of violence occur against Christians.

The ten worst countries for Christian persecution are, in descending order, North Korea, Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Iran, Pakistan, Eritrea, and Nigeria. Of these ten, only North Korea is less than 50% Muslim, and only North Korea had a primary “persecution engine” that wasn’t “Islamic extremism”—it was atheistic Communism.